Event highlights for the weekend of Sept. 6-7 around the North and Northwest suburbs. Listings are subject to change. Please call the venue in advance. To submit an event for consideration, please visit http://triblocal.com/events.
Touch-a-truck in...

Growing up in College Park, Bertie Hunt can remember her favorite place to go trick or treating on Halloween night – for a while, anyway.
“We used to trick or treat around Lake Adair,” she said, adding that the beautiful luxury homes...

Highland Park resident Steve Keller has many questions he'd like to ask his late father, Robert Keller, one of 50 Jewish children who were brought from Austria to America in 1939 as Nazi Germany was ratcheting up the evil apparatus that soon would...

A Westmont man with a reported history of mental illness who authorities said had a cache of weapons and "thousands of rounds" of ammunition at his home was charged Friday with vandalizing a Lombard synagogue.
John White, 40, of Tartan Lakes Drive,...

Employees and clergy at a synagogue in Lombard were still a bit shaken Wednesday after the west suburban temple was vandalized in an apparent hate crime.
"They’re still a bit rattled," said Rabbi Andrea Cosnowsky of Congregation Etz Chaim, 1710 S. Highland Ave., on Wednesday.
She said several employees were in the synagogue about 7:30 p.m. when they heard the sound of glass breaking as windows were smashed. They immediately called 911. Police responded and took a 40-year-old Westmont man into...

It is a long way from Chicago to Germany, and for Judith Levi, granddaughter of German Jews who fled the Nazis, it's an even longer journey toward reconciliation with a people she associated with evil.
Levi will discuss her journey in a slideshow presentation, "The Heart Can Change," on Thursday at 10 a.m. The program, sponsored by the National Council of Jewish Women Chicago North Shore Section, is being hosted in a member's Highland Park home. To RSVP or for more information, call 847-853-8889. A...

The JCYS George W. Lutz Family Center's annual Holiday Bazaar in Highland Park is more than a way to get a jump on gift shopping.
Now in its 12th year, the bazaar was a life-changing, career-making experience for Alyssa Knobel, a former volunteer who is now a Highland Park councilwoman.
"It's how I got my start in community service," she said.
Leslie Berkowitz, owner of Northbrook-based Kidoodles Inc., which offers personalized gifts, was among the bazaar's first vendors. It was a way for her to...

L'Chaim Center; take two.
"We are officially open," said a beaming Rabbi David Begoun, who, with his wife, Ali, founded the center in 2008. Now, its permanent home at 405 Lake Cook Road will have a grand opening celebration from 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday.
The L'Chaim Center is "a community of Jewish people who are inspired and yearning to grow in their knowledge and their experience of Judaism," Begoun said. "People come from all backgrounds. Some have very little knowledge (about their Jewish heritage)...

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, begins Thursday, to be followed Oct. 4 by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.
North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe and B'nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield are among an ever-increasing number of houses of worship who are streaming their High Holiday services live.
Virtual services are a thing, said Arlene Mayzel, the executive director of BJBE. "There is more interest," she said. "I get calls all the time from...

"I was always kind of a nerdy kid," says Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, scanning her extensive book collection in the Evanston condo she shares with her husband and sons. "Aha! Here it is," she says, pulling out the first book she ever wrote, a pastel-colored collection of third-grade haiku.
The former rabbi at Northwestern University, who currently works for Ask Big Questions — an initiative of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life — has written several books since, including a memoir...